Israeli software-as-a-service customer collaboration startup Lightico Ltd. has raised $14.5 million in funding to accelerate product development and expand its global presence. The funding round was led by Mangrove Capital Partners and included previous investors lool ventures and Crescendo. Founded in 2014, Lightico provides customer experience software online focused on accelerating sales and service requests in call centers. The company’s ...

Cloud-based employee performance management software startup 15Five Inc. said today it has raised $30.7 million in new funding to accelerate growth, scale sales and marketing, and to invest further in product development. The Series B round was led by Next47 and included Matrix Partners, PointNine Capital, LAUNCH Fund, Newground Ventures, Bling Capital, Chaifetz Group and Origin Ventures. Founded in ...

U.S. government officials filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. over a ban against its equipment being used by government agencies. The ban in question, not to be confused with a later, since partially rescinded ban on the export of U.S. technology to Huawei, banned the use of Huawei and ZTE Corp. equipment by U.S. government ...

An official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has warned a meeting of top state election officials to be cautious of hacking attempts targeting local and state election workers in the lead up to the 2020 elections. Geoff Hale (pictured), director of the DHS Election Security Initiative, told a meeting of secretaries of state on ...

Robotic lawyer startup DoNotPay Ltd. today said it has raised $4.6 million in new funding to expand its service into new markets. The seed funding round was back by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z, Greylock Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Tuesday Capital and a range of individual investors. Founded in 2016, DoNotPay offers an automated lawyer chatbot ...

A 23-year-old man who was involved in multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks in December 2013 and January 2014 that targeted online gaming services has been sentenced to 27 months in prison. Austin Thompson, known online as DerpTroll, was part of a group known as DerpTrolling that attacked and successfully targeted Sony Online Entertainment, Valve Inc.’s Steam and ...

Blockchain customer relationship management startup Cere Network has raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding to help it develop what it claims is the world’s first blockchain CRM and customer data platform ecosystem. The funding, which follows the company’s graduation from the Binance Lab’s Incubation Program in June, came from NEO Global Capital, Arrington XRP Capital ...

Two security researchers have published details of vulnerabilities in communications hubs that connect to smart home locks manufactured by Zipato that can allow hackers to open doors easily. Detailed today by Chase Dardaman and Jason Wheeler at Blackmarble, two of the vulnerabilities relate to the design and implementation of the authentication mechanism in the Zipato application ...

Chinese border guards are allegedly installing spyware on the phones of people who enter some land borders in the country’s far west, according to reports from Motherboard and others today. The spyware in question, going by the names of BXAQ or Fengcai, is said to be part of an app being installed on Android phones by border ...

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has scheduled an “Unpacked” launch event for Aug. 7 that’s expected to feature the announcement of the Galaxy Note 10, the latest premium phone in the South Korean’s giant’s smartphone lineup. Officially, the event in New York City, announced late Monday, will “unveil new devices designed to take the Galaxy ecosystem’s ...